RIP to the Frenchiest Frenchman ever

[Keebleman]

Jean-Paul Belmondo has died.  He was so French he made Charles de Gaulle look Belgian.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11811293

[Keebleman]

Ironically though, his appeal was explicitly based on him being a younger (and Frencher of course) version of Humphrey Bogart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSiMfvDyhyg

[dissolute ocelot]

Pierrot Le Fou is one of my favourite films, so completely ridiculous and Godardian and French and iconic. He may have been very cool in Breathless, but was also capable of being spectacularly uncool at the same time.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I was genuinely confused when I saw this thread as "the Frenchiest Frenchman" died almost fifty years ago, the dirty little bastard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTM40o3WgZo

[Smeraldina Rima]

He was called Jean Paul Beautiful-world but should really have been called Jean Paul Beautiful-face. Farewell, Jean Paul Belviso. I enjoyed Breathless and Léon Morin (Priest film).

[mothman]

It's little known, but his 80s French-Canadian movie Hold Up (with Kim Cattrall speaking French!) is actually far superior to Quick Change, the Bill Murray remake.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

He was called Jean Paul Beautiful-world but should really have been called Jean Paul Beautiful-face. Farewell, Jean Paul Belviso. I enjoyed Breathless and Léon Morin (Priest film).

Thankfully he wasn't called Jean Paul Belendo.

[bgmnts]

One critic described him as "a bewitchingly ugly man."

Lovely tribute.

[dissolute ocelot]

I just watched Alain Resnais's Stavisky (1975), one of Belmondo's lesser known performances but one of his best that I've seen. He's a Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant reinvented as a Frenchman who was at the centre of a real, notorious French financial scandal in the early 1930s; when the shit hit the fan, it was the immigrant Stavisky and some corrupt left-wing politicians who paid the price, rather than the equally corrupt police and right-wingers (putting paid, the film suggests, to any hope of socialism or anti-Nazism in France).

Belmondo is excellent as the enigmatic, charming Stavisky, a Gatsbyesque figure, a melancholy playboy, with so many aliases he no longer knows who he is, willing to throw away millions of francs to maintain the illusion that he's rich, but ultimately knowing who's the fall-guy. As a film it mixes political corruption, communism, fascism, and anti-semitism with the charms of old Europe: chateaux, casinos, Charles Boyer, nice frocks, and shiny jewels. And who would be a better, more charming conman than Belmondo?

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Stavisky was poorly received when it was in competition in Cannes and was a huge public flop. It caused Belmondo to focus instead on run of the mill thrillers, which was a huge loss.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Lovely tribute.

We watched Breathless in A-level film studies and much of the discussion from the women in the class (including the teacher) was about what a BOBFOC he was.

[Mr Banlon]

He looked like Arthur Smith

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Christ.

The racing driver Paul Belmondo was his son and had an affair with the Princess of Monaco

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Belmondo

[Mr Banlon]

The Frenchest ever person :

[Sebastian Cobb]

Always thought it was Dominique Pinon.

[dissolute ocelot]

Stavisky was poorly received when it was in competition in Cannes and was a huge public flop. It caused Belmondo to focus instead on run of the mill thrillers, which was a huge loss.

I've seen Stavisky described as an attempt by Resnais to make a mainstream, less political film, which it clearly isn't, despite the glamour and historical setting. Normal commercial unpolitical dramas don't have Trotsky pop up as an ambiguous background character, a weird Resnais timeline, and a protagonist who runs guns to Spanish right-wingers in 1933 while delivering campy foreshadowing about "never mind enough guns for a coup, this is enough for a civil war!" Although the legendary Charles Boyer who has a supporting role got a lot of praise and a prize at Cannes.

[Keebleman]

Resurrecting this thread because I have just seen this clip of JPB performing a truly amazing stunt.

https://twitter.com/michaelwarbur17/status/1593583717565480964?s=64&t=aQarfEYeUgNNzd8h6ypV7Q&fbclid=IwAR1hydY6CYlYg3BoDseL7AbCXM9Q-r-_RzoKsK-jkzbByUm64vheKa4j-r0

I wonder if it was conceived after a viewing of Buster Keaton's Seven Chances?  Not as much skill as Keaton had, no, but balls even bigger than the papier mache rocks that followed Buster down the hill were essential.

[Egyptian Feast]

I love that clip, been meaning to see the whole film since I caught it on Twitter. Belmondo is the definition of cool as fuck.